Preacher Tried to Hire a Hitman on the Dark Web to Kill His Wife

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Stephen Allwine’s Church of God community in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, knew him as a highly regarded deacon and elder, but on the “dark web,” he allegedly used the username “dogdaygod” to find a contract killer to murder his wife, Amy. But prosecutors believe that when the 44-year-old was scammed by a murder-for-hire site, he took the gun into his own hands and fatally shot her last year.

Allwine allegedly spent $6,000 in cryptocurrency trying to find someone who would commit the murder and make it look like an accident. Left to his own devices when his initial plan failed, prosecutors claim that Allwine sedated his wife before shooting her, then dialed 911 to report that she’d committed suicide. Allwine is facing first-degree premeditated murder in Amy’s deadly shooting in January 2017.

At Allwine’s trial yesterday, the prosecutor claimed that he was motivated by the fear of being shunned by his ultraconservative Pentecostal sect of Christianity if he dared get divorced.